Huey Long

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party were just like the old patent medicine drummer that used to come around our country.

He had two bottles of medicine.

He'd play a banjo and he'd sell two bottles of medicine.

One of those bottles of medicine was called "high popalowrum" and another one of those bottles of medicine was called "low popahighrum."

( audience laughs ) Finally somebody around there said "Is there any difference in these medicines?"

"Oh," he said, "considerable.

They're both good, but they're different."

He said, "That high popalowrum "is made from the bark off the tree "that we take from the top down.

"And that low popahighrum is made from the bark that we take from the root up."

( audience laughs ) And the only difference that I have found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership was that one of them was skinning from the ankle up and the other one from the ear down when I got to congress.

( audience laughing and cheering ) Well, I just thought he was just a swell man and he done a lot for the state of Louisiana.

He built our bridges, he built our highways.

And one time he come to Morgan City and made a speech and somebody asked him why he was bringing so much outside labor in there.

He said, "Well, when these people teach us Cajuns "how to build bridges, we'll start building them ourself, and we'll send them back."

So... and he was just swell all the way around, that's all I can say.

I would say that Huey Long was a good man-- he helped the poor.

And he wrote a book-- My First Days in the White House.

And if they wouldn't have killed him I believe he would be president because he was smart.

Well, now, everybody loved him.

That's why.

There's nobody hated him.

No poor people ever hated him.

I can't remember any Saturday night that I went anywhere that we didn't talk about killing Huey Long.

It was the normal conversation.

I suppose that the very strong pro-Long people weren't talking that way, but the antis certainly.

It doesn't mean you meant to do it.

It just meant that you wished that there was some way to rid the state of this incubus.

The atmosphere was so thick and so tense that I've always said that while there was no conspiracy and no specific plan to assassinate Huey Long I think the thing had to happen and something triggered the occasion.

ANNOUNCER: Presenting His Excellency Huey Pierce Long the dictator of Louisiana-- the enigma who is making many Americans regret that the United States ever purchased Louisiana.

I was elected railroad commissioner of Louisiana in 1918 and they tried to impeach me in 1920.

( audience laughs ) When they failed to impeach me in 1920 they indicted me in 1921.

( audience laughs ) When I wiggled through that I managed to become governor in 1928 and they impeached me in 1929.

( audience laughs ) NARRATOR: He was a masterful politician who pretended he was just a simple country boy a democrat who scorned democratic institutions.

He was a professed champion of the powerless who amassed more personal power in his state than any man in American history, and not satisfied with that, hoped to win the presidency itself.

Huey long, in my opinion, was the greatest man in this whole world, and he's done more for Louisiana than all the politicians combined as far back as I can remember.

I wouldn't call him a great man.

He was certainly an extremely able politician.

He was very much like Caesar in ancient Rome-- he leveled the liberties of the republic but did give some aid to the poor.

How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what's intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat?

The only way you'll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub he ain't got no business with.

( applause ) If a man really has a purpose in life the ambition and the dream that he has become pretty much the same thing.

Huey Long was a populist-- very much of a populist.

In my judgment, he was the best of all the populists that came along.

And he wanted to implement the idea that none should be too rich and none too poor.

He wasn't against people being rich except that he felt that by permitting the few to have so much there wasn't much left for the many and he wanted to spread some of that wealth around.

He was fond of saying "We're trying to make every man a king."

That was his belief-- to let everybody be equal.

I don't know what would have happened if he would have lived.

It might have been a better place to live if they wouldn't have killed him.

♪ Oh, they shot Huey Long in Louisiana ♪ ♪ As he walked down the capitol steps... ♪ NARRATOR: More than 100,000 men, women and children came to Senator Huey Long's funeral at Baton Rouge in September of 1935.

They were country people mostly from the bayous and pine woods and red clay farms of Louisiana unaccustomed to the city but anxious to pay their respects to the turbulent man they believed had been their friend.

To get there, they had walked or ridden on the hard-top roads he had built for them crossed rivers he had spanned with bridges.

And they watched in silence as he was buried beneath the lawn of the massive new capitol building he had also ordered built and in which an assassin had struck him down.

♪ ...claiming that Huey broke every rule.

♪ NARRATOR: The country had never seen a man quite like Huey Long.

No one who saw him would ever forget him.

In 1946, Robert Penn Warren published his celebrated novel All the King's Men, which told of the rise and fall of a ruthless and dynamic Southern politician.

WARREN: "'Now, dirt's a funny thing,' the boss said.

"'Come to think of it "'there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe "'except what's underwater, and that's dirt, too.

"'It's dirt makes the grass grow.

"'A diamond ain't a thing in the world "'but a piece of dirt that got awful hot.

"'And God almighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it "'and made you and me and George Washington "'and mankind, blessed in faculty and apprehension.

"'It all depends on what you do with the dirt.

Is that right?'"

WOMAN: You know, he loved that story about being born in a log cabin.

And it was just remarkable that he could really tell it, and it would be true.

But it was a very, very large, beautiful log building but it gave Huey the license to say he was born in a log cabin.

He wanted to be just like somebody had jumped up out of a stump.

And he didn't ever want to tell anybody that his family were not poor, poor, poor.

NARRATOR: He was born Huey Pierce Long, Jr. on his father's farm at Winnfield in the north Louisiana hill country in 1893 seventh of nine children.

Even as a boy, he was driven and excitable.

His father liked to say that Huey would jump in the well to see what it was like if it wasn't kept covered.

He could never wait for anything, could never stand being second.

Oh, yeah, you could talk to him but now if he got ready to butt in on something, he'd butt in regardless, even to his daddy that way.

His daddy started to tell something he'd probably take it up and tell it for him and he never would call him down, you see.

But he was a very spoken man, I'll say that.

And he knew what he was talking about because he understood, you see.

NARRATOR: On the flyleaf of his schoolbooks he signed himself "Honorable Huey P. Long" without the "Junior."

School bored him.

He talked his teachers into letting him skip the seventh grade, excelled at debating and when he failed to come in first dismissed the judges as ignorant or bought.

He was expelled from high school in his senior year for printing up handbills denouncing the faculty.

One schoolmate's mother remembered him as "a pesterance."

He hated farm work, craved attention.

He wanted to be somebody.

HUNT: Winnfield was the greatest place in the world and he thought so, too.

And debating teams would go to Baton Rouge once a year and he went down there on his debating team.

And when he came back, we were walking down the street and he said to me, "I'm going to fix old Winnfield up "one of these days, just like Baton Rouge.

"We're too country up here; we need some fixing up and I'm going to fix it up."

NARRATOR: Winn Parish, where he grew up was a poor section of a poor state.

It produced only one crop in abundance, one observer noted: dissent.

Winn had been one of the last Louisiana parishes to be settled and had opposed secession at the time of the Civil War.

People there believed the Confederacy was a rich man's cause.

Later, during the Populist Era when William Jennings Bryan stumped the nation Winn was his Louisiana stronghold.

Bryan championed the common man proclaiming in one speech: "Every man a king, but no man wears a crown."

"I was born into politics," Long once said.

But before he could begin promoting himself he sold other things.

At 17, he became a traveling salesman peddling Gold Dust Washing Powder Faultless Starch, Never-Fail Kerosene Cans and a patent laxative called "Black Draft."

He was good at it.

He had the gift of gab, his first employer remembered and he rarely took "no" for an answer.

"I can sell anything to anybody," Long said.

His salesmanship also helped him win a wife.

At Shreveport in 1911, he judged a bake-off he had organized to advertise still another product-- a cotton-seed substitute for lard called Cottolene.

Among the contestants was a dark-eyed stenographer named Rose McConnell.

Long tactfully awarded her and her mother the top prizes.

2½ years later, he talked Rose into marrying him.

To her he confided his ambitions: he would win a secondary state office, he told her, then the governorship, become a United States senator, finally, occupy the White House.

"It almost gave you the chills to hear him tell about it," Rose remembered.

"He was measuring it all."

Huey Long was a salesman.

He sold cottonseed oil, cooking oil.

And he was in the store, and when he left-- the streets wasn't paved, you know?

So a car passed and splashed him with water.

So he cussed the man out and he said, "Someday, I'm going to pave those streets."

And that's what he did.

He's the one that first paved the roads.

NARRATOR: In 1914, Long borrowed enough money to pay for one year at Tulane Law School.

When it ran out, he persuaded the examining committee to give him his own private bar exam, passed it easily and opened an office back home in Winnfield.

He said himself, "When I came down those courthouse steps having passed my law degree, I came down running for office."

But, you see, that man went with freshman English at Oklahoma one year of law school at Tulane for a three-year course and then applied for the bar examination.

That's first-rate brains.

NARRATOR: At first he worked out of a tiny room above his uncle's bank.

His first desk was a dry goods box.

He took his telephone calls at the shoe store.

He was proud that he never took a case against a poor man.

He didn't get rich but he did get a reputation as a defender of the friendless.

Long himself made sure of that.

As the Winnfield correspondent for several Shreveport newspapers he reported all his courtroom triumphs in detail.

But power and influence in Louisiana were centered elsewhere wielded by big planters, lumbermen, bankers, utilities and mercantile interests operating along the Mississippi.

Overshadowing everything was Standard Oil already pumping big profits from the bayous.

In New Orleans, the corrupt political machine-- the old regulars, or "choctaws," as they were called-- controlled the state through alliances with sheriffs and courthouse rings in outlying parishes.

These ruling factions might have quarreled among themselves but they were united in their indifference to the needs of the powerless.

There were fewer than 300 miles of paved roads in the whole state, and only three major bridges.

The Louisiana literacy rate was the second lowest in the nation.

One of seven white farmers had never been inside a schoolroom, half had not been beyond the fourth grade.

Statistics for their wives and daughters were worse, those for blacks, worse still.

Resentment festered but found no effective expression.

Louisiana was ready for Huey Long.

MAN: Our state is geographically three or four states.

We have New Orleans, we have the French Acadian section and we have the Baptist belt of north Louisiana.

And until Huey came along, no one had ever been able to weld those three parts of the state or the people in those parts of the state together.

He made all of them feel that they were Louisiana.

NARRATOR: In 1918, he was only 24 years old too young to hold most state offices.

But there was no minimum age for service on the state railroad commission which regulated utilities in Louisiana.

He ran hard for the seat, won easily and took out after the railroads for ignoring country towns and Standard Oil for seeking to crush its smaller competitors.

When the telephone company raised its rates 20% Long got them rolled back.

And when the company sued, he argued the commission's case before the United States Supreme Court in Washington and won.

He was often called a buffoon, but he was brilliant.

And William Howard Taft, the Supreme Court justice said that his mind was one of the finest legal minds that any lawyer ever had who appeared before the Court.

He could be a buffoon, but that was a character again of Huey Long.

He was brilliant.

Well, Huey came along at that particular time and he said, "I'm going to fight big oil.

"I'm going to fight the telephone company.

"I'm going to fight all of these things that have oppressed you all these years."

NARRATOR: In 1924, Huey Long ran for governor and came in a strong third.

In Louisiana political races, to place or show could be nearly as important as winning.

At 30, he was already a major power in state politics.

He ran again in 1928.

Louisiana had never seen a campaigner to match him.

He crisscrossed the state in a shiny new Ford covering 15,000 miles and delivering some 600 speeches at crossroads and church picnics and country fairs-- anywhere he could get up a crowd.

While other Southern politicians built their following by race-baiting, Long did not.

He made himself the issue.

Nearly every tree and telephone pole and barnside along the way held a Long poster or handbill.

And when his opponents ripped them down the candidate himself stopped to hang them higher standing on the roof of his car and pounding in the nails with a long-handled hammer.

I went to every speech that Long made in Morgan City every time he come to Morgan City.

He was a great...

I guarantee, he was smart.

I don't think, in my books I don't think there's a man today as smart as what Long was.

He could get under your skin.

If somebody hated Long when he got through making his talk the ones that hated him I think they didn't hate him anymore.

DODD: Huey spoke to the people out where the votes were.

He went to them and he made them feel that they had a part in the program.

It was their program, never Huey's program-- it was the people's program.

And he appealed to the emotions that people had at that time-- hunger, no home to live in and yet there were houses vacant; no bread on the table and yet we had a surplus of wheat; no clothes and yet we had a surplus of cotton.

If we wore overalls, he wore overalls and if we had a patch on them, he had a patch on them, too.

That's the way he went along with his work back at that time which was the beginning of his career, you see as running for governor of Louisiana.

And the masses of America-- 75% to 80% to 85% of the people not only give up their property year after year but they go further and further and further into economic slavery... NARRATOR: His listeners loved to hear him lash the rich and powerful the thieves, bugs and lice who dared oppose him.

He knew always that he was at his best on the attack: the bigger the target, the more attention he got.

But they loved still more his vision of a new Louisiana.

"Every man a king" was now his battle cry.

And at the little Cajun town of St. Martinville he set forth his hopes for the future.

"It is here," he said, "under this oak "where Evangeline waited for her lover Gabriel who never came.

"This oak is an immortal spot made so by Longfellow's poem.

"But Evangeline is not the only one "who has waited here in disappointment.

"Where are the schools that you have waited "for your children to have that have never come?

"Where are the roads and the highways "that you send your money to build?

"They are no nearer now than ever before.

"Where are the institutions "to care for the sick and the disabled?

"Evangeline wept bitter tears in her disappointment "but it lasted through only one lifetime.

"Your tears have lasted through generations.

"Give me the chance to dry the tears of those who still weep here."

On primary day the country voters of Louisiana gave him that chance-- trappers and fishermen of the bayous redneck farmers from the hills, sharecroppers and tenants and small-town storekeepers, Catholics and Protestants alike.

"They don't know Long," a local politician told a reporter.

"They never saw him and would not know him "if he stepped off the train at our station "but they know him in name and you can't make them believe he is not their defender."

HAROLD BIGLER: We loved him.

We like him.

All my people, the whole Burns family voted for him.

We went ten miles in a speedboat to vote for him on Bayou Chene.

And I think most of the Bayou Chene people all voted for him.

Everyone in this part of the country loved him.

NARRATOR: He beat his two opponents by the largest margin in Louisiana history.

Both declined to face him in a runoff.

"We'll show them who's boss" he told his supporters on election night.

"We're just getting started."

WOMAN: I was born Huey Elizabeth East January 17, 1928 the day that Huey Long was elected governor.

Therefore, my father named me Huey, after Huey Long.

DODD: He set out to do something, and make people act and he made them act.

Contrary to what a lot of people have written about Huey and said about him he didn't break the law-- Huey used the law.

And if there wasn't a law available to do what he wanted to do under our Constitution he passed a law that would enable him to do what he wanted.

So he used the law; he didn't break the law.

NARRATOR: Huey landed running.

During his first months as governor he pushed dozens of bills through the legislature to begin construction of the network of roads and bridges he had promised; to pipe natural gas to New Orleans; to revise the tax code to increase the share paid by industry and reduce that paid by poor farmers; and to provide free textbooks to Louisiana schoolchildren.

He began to call himself "the Kingfish" after a character on the radio program Amos 'n' Andy.

And within a year, you couldn't go anywhere in Louisiana without knowing the Kingfish was in power.

The entire state bore his stamp.

His free textbook legislation made every schoolchild a walking advertisement for Huey Long.

He opened night schools for the illiterate.

He improved hospitals for the poor.

Above all, he built roads, good roads-- 1,583 miles of concrete roads, 718 miles of asphalt 2,816 miles of gravel.

During his tenure, 111 bridges went up.

And by 1931, Louisiana was employing ten percent of all the men working on roads and bridges in the United States.

How did he help Louisiana?

He took it out of the mud and he took it... and built roads.

Everything he promised-- free schoolbooks to children who couldn't buy books even to go to school and went to a one-room school on top of a hill and that's as far as their education ever went.

He helped everybody, in a lot of things he done.

We might have not had no bridges across the Mississippi River if it wouldn't have been for him.

He was the first one started that.

And I think that was a mighty good thing.

ANNOUNCER: Bridges are an important item in a state like Louisiana which is cut up by many rivers and bayous.

Hence, all the farmers cheered when Huey built the $11 million trans-Mississippi bridge.

They didn't have to pay for it.

NARRATOR: He spent more in four years as governor than his predecessors had in 12 and as with everything Huey did it was all tainted with controversy and accusations of corruption.

It's a mistake to regard Huey Long as an ideological figure-- a man committed to a program, and so on.

I think Huey Long's great passion was for power and money.

And he stole a lot of money and accumulated a lot of power and destroyed all those who got in the way of these two ambitions.

NARRATOR: But he kept the people on his side.

He campaigned constantly to sell his programs and he liked nothing better than making a speech.

WOMAN: It was a show in itself, it really was.

He got the people in a good mood right off.

By the time he took the stage, they were ready for him.

It was just like a drink before your dinner.

He gave it to you.

He was a wonderful speaker, but the crowd was prepared.

He had his own band with him and whoever introduced him, of course, knew what to say.

And then he came on as the dessert of the whole business.

It was wonderful to hear him speak.

And the people at St. Martinville-- that's where his campaign started-- and they said, in French, you know "Man, he talked until the leaves on the trees shivered down."

It was wonderful.

When that man spoke in the state of Louisiana on a statewide hookup you could hear a pin drop in most everybody's home in the state of Louisiana.

NARRATOR: Sound trucks, among the first ever used in the United States now heralded every appearance.

His huge voice was amplified to the furthest edges of the enormous crowds that turned out to see and hear him.

Those voters he did not reach in person heard him lacerate his enemies on the radio or read the blistering circulars he dictated personally and had delivered by state employees to every voter's door.

Well, what would happen, he would arrive, you see, with all of his highway police going before and behind and the big car would drive up and come to the bandstand in front of the post office and everyone was gathered there.

And he would march up between his henchmen marching along with him.

And when he spoke, it was a dynamic experience for all of us whether you were for him or against him.

And the people near the front would say, "Give it to them, Huey, give it to them!"

And way in the back somebody would say, "Go to hell!"

It was certainly the event to go to hear Huey even though you hated every word he said.

You had to admire his delivery, his... the way that he manipulated the crowd.

We'll not destroy the profit system.

We'll not destroy the capitalistic system.

We won't destroy the Constitution of the United States.

We won't destroy the Declaration of Independence.

On the contrary, we'll make the Declaration of Independence read in the words it was written in instead of having an interpretation of Wall Street.

He spoke without notes.

He could give the facts and figures of state government without notes at all, and perfect delivery.

And then I've heard him speak to faculty and students at L.S.U.

in the most perfect grammar that you ever heard uttered out of a man's mouth.

He could change with the crowd as far as his speechmaking was concerned.

He was Louisiana's last great orator.

NARRATOR: On the stump, Huey would eye his audience and ask them how many owned four suits.

No one raised a hand.

Anybody own three?

Not a hand.

Two?

No one.

Then in a voice full of indignation he would reveal that J.P. Morgan owned 100 suits each one stolen from the back of a working man.

The crowd cheered, overlooking Huey's own lavish wardrobe itself rumored to exceed 100 suits paid for mainly out of the huge legal fees he received for appointing himself as counsel in state battles against the corporations.

But opposition was growing.

In New Orleans, his opponents were outraged by his success and his audacity.

And now, there were other critics who were troubled most of all, they said, by his methods.

If you wanted free schoolbooks, great but you didn't do it the way that Huey did it.

And I just keep reiterating that, because that was basic.

You could say, "Well, Mussolini made the trains run on time; Mussolini made the trains clean."

Are you for Mussolini?

NARRATOR: He sent the state militia into two New Orleans suburbs to smash gambling there without bothering with the formality of warrants.

When the legislature balked at his plan to tear down the dilapidated old governor's mansion to make way for a new one, he ordered in a wrecking crew of convicts from the state penitentiary and supervised the demolition himself.

ANNOUNCER: Huey built himself a new governor's mansion.

Here it is.

The taxpayers were mighty sore about it.

They almost impeached him.

He replied that the old mansion was not good enough for him though it had been too good for his predecessors.

I don't pretend that he didn't do some things that were good.

As a matter of fact, in spite of my opposition to Huey Long I know of his whole program, and in spite of a lot of other protests I myself voted for one of his important purposes and that is the free textbook program.

I did not support his means of financing it and would not support that.

He provided about $100 million worth of good roads and it cost $150 million.

That's a little bit rough, but it's the kind of thing.

Everything that he did cost more than it should because there was the cushion for other people's fraud.

And, uh... he... his contribution was largely in bricks and mortar.

Machiavelli long ago said "A great man cannot be a good man."

But there are limits to the methods that a great man may employ in order to do good.

And I think in Huey Long's case, the methods involved the destruction of democracy in Louisiana a systematic corruption and theft using the state government as an instrumentality and that these methods outweighed the good he did.

Well, the poor people loved him and schoolchildren, too.

He gave them free lunches and pencils and paper.

Yeah.

NARRATOR: In early 1929, he convened a special session of the legislature to enact a new tax of five cents on every barrel of crude oil refined in Louisiana.

His opponents decided that Long had gone far enough.

The new tax was voted down and anti-Long legislators moved for impeachment.

Long realized he'd overplayed his hand and tried to force an early adjournment.

A fistfight broke out on the floor and the move to adjourn was defeated.

A list of impeachable offenses was drawn up.

There were initially 19 charges: some serious, some trivial but all aimed at driving the governor from office.

He was accused of plotting the murder of a political opponent and firing a telephone operator for failing to get him a connection fast enough; of bribing legislators and attending a drunken party at which half-naked women danced the hula.

The house voted to impeach on eight items.

The senate would decide Huey's guilt or innocence.

Meanwhile, the opposition held an impeachment rally in Baton Rouge.

The music was provided gratis by the Standard Oil Company band.

There's no doubt in my mind that when the effort was made to impeach him that wasn't because he was trying to give free schoolbooks to children.

It was because he was trying to make the wealthy-- the oil industry at that time-- pay for it.

NARRATOR: Long fought back hard against conviction.

He blanketed the countryside with circulars and took to the road again.

"I fought the Standard Oil Company "and put them pie-eating members of the gang out of office," he said at one stop.

"I used a crowbar to pry some of them out "and I'm using a corkscrew now to take the rest out piece by piece."

Long's opponents needed the votes of two-thirds of the state senate to convict.

He outmaneuvered them by persuading 15 senators-- one more than he needed to win-- to sign a document vowing that they would never vote to find him guilty.

All 15 were later rewarded with jobs or special favors.

It had been a close call.

He would never again allow anyone to threaten his power.

"I used to try to get things done by saying please," he said.

"Now I dynamite them out of my path."

And now the corporate element of this state that worked cheek-by-jowl, hand-in-hand with them who profited by, who ransacked this state for the element of their allies are being told what they can do and what they can't do what they will pay, what they can't keep from paying for the welfare of the people of Louisiana.

And we expect to have this state ruled by the people and not by the lords and the interests of high finance.

Huey was a man of extreme dynamism.

Had a marvelous mind.

He would work all day and all night and go get drunk and sleep it off and be ready to go the next day.

He was a doer, you know, he was a believer in himself-- that man in that double-breasted suit.

And I can still see him strutting with his white pants and the... well, I'd say atrocious, maybe but a brightly colored tie.

He was quite a man, a character.

NARRATOR: Huey's style of dress was always unconventional, a calculated assault on the eye.

He wore white linen suits and pink ties orange, lilac and orchid shirts gaudy silk handkerchiefs, and brown and white spats.

But then he'd take off his shoes and show the holes in his socks.

The crowds loved it, and said so wherever Huey went.

Huey projected a winning personality.

It might have come from his ability as a crackerjack salesman because he started out as a salesman.

But he always wore the finest of clothes he wore diamonds, he rode in big cars and while he was talking about how poor his upbringing was the people that were listening to him looked at a man-- here's a man who's come from nothing and he's a real sure enough big shot.

And he projected that to the people-- we're going to get with the winner.

NARRATOR: He was rapidly gaining a national reputation as a sort of countrified clown a reputation he delighted in fostering.

What I want you to do is to sing my composition: "Every Man a King."

Fine.

I want you to play it all for these people.

And if you like it, I want you to put it out.

BOTH: ♪ Every man a king ♪ ♪ Every man a king ♪ ♪ For you can be a millionaire ♪ ♪ But there's something belonging to others ♪ ♪ There's enough for all people to share ♪ BOTH: ♪ When it's sunny June and December, too ♪ ♪ Or in the wintertime or spring ♪ ♪ There'll be peace without end ♪ ♪ Every neighbor a friend ♪ ♪ With every man a king.

♪ So what do you think about that?

I think it's fine.

NARRATOR: Once, a German naval commander in full dress uniform paid a courtesy call on Louisiana's governor in his New Orleans hotel.

Long received him in green silk pajamas and a scarlet robe.

The officer was indignant.

Long went aboard his ship the next day to apologize.

This time he wore formal dress including a collar so high, he told reporters he had to stand on a stump to spit over it.

The writer John Dos Passos once said that Huey looked like an overgrown small boy with very bad habits indeed.

He couldn't stand being touched.

He had a morbid fear of being attacked.

He could be disciplined and slothful at times on the bottle and overweight then suddenly teetotal and trim again.

He slept little, drank heavily and ate off other people's plates.

DODD: I met him personally when I was in high school.

I sat down at a table and he was eating with another man and me.

I didn't like it very much because he didn't order anything; he just nervously ate off of my plate.

And being a growing boy I didn't like to share my supper with Huey Long or anybody else.

As you know, I haven't had a drink for 18 months but I'll sample this, Ralph in order to be able to assure you that it's genuine.

I think that's all right, I think that's all right.

Better be sure about it.

( laughter ) NARRATOR: He had started drinking during his years as a salesman and the habit stole over him slowly but surely.

But it was power and politics that really consumed him.

He seldom stayed in the splendid new governor's mansion he'd designed to look like the White House.

Instead he maintained two expensive hotel suites at the Heidelberg in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans at the Roosevelt where he received a ceaseless flow of visitors.

It was not uncommon to get a call from Long at 3:00 a.m. for a 4:00 a.m. appointment, and no one was ever late.

A reporter who interviewed him in his suite remembered that the phone rang every minute or two and he would get up and walk through a couple of rooms to answer it and come back and fling himself heavily on the bed so that his shoulders and feet hit at the same moment.

ANNOUNCER: Huey likes to tell the story of how his dad found tobacco on the precocious youngster and predicted that, "If you stay alive until you are 21 it'll be the wonder of this world."

Well, the old boy was wrong.

It does seem that only the good die young.

NARRATOR: Huey was never particularly close to his family.

He had frequent violent quarrels with his brothers Julius and Earl and he rarely saw his wife and children.

We had a right to complain that we didn't have him at home much because he was out campaigning a great deal of the time.

So much of the time, when he came home, he needed rest.

We would occasionally have some family life together but not near as much as I'd liked to have had.

NARRATOR: "I can't live a normal family life," he once told Rose and they both knew he was right.

For Huey there was only one real passion; he never stopped courting power.

The Louisiana constitution barred any man from succeeding himself as governor.

This presented only a momentary awkwardness for Huey Long.

He announced he would run for the United States Senate in 1930.

The campaign would be a referendum on Long's program.

And he made it clear he had no intention of resigning as governor even if he won, until his term ended two years later in 1932 when he would hand over the office to a successor pledged to carry out his wishes.

To defuse opposition from the press he launched his own newspaper, the Louisiana Progress its cartoonists and editorial writers paid to vilify the opposition and glorify their hero.

DODD: Well, he called the mayor of New Orleans "Turkey Head Walmsley" and that's a reference to a turkey buzzard.

And he had a wonderful artist that would draw cartoons and he would sit up on a fence all of the enemies and he'd put buzzard bodies on them, and their heads and he'd make their faces look like turkey buzzard beaks.

We call in Mr. Rockefeller... NARRATOR: Huey was a mudslinger a genius at invective, and a master of abuse.

He could make a nickname fast and he could make it stick: names like "WhistleBritches Richter," "Shinola" Phelps "Feather Duster" Ransdell and Colonel "Bow Wow" Ewing as well as a barnyard of "trough feeders," "buzzard brains" "hogs," "pigs" and "shoats."

He threatened this menagerie variously with burning, skinning, corkscrewing, flaying shooting, beating, stomping broiling, braining, frying, and worse.

His enemies tried to give as good as they got calling him "the messiah of the rednecks" and "Hooey the 14th."

The Louisiana Progress was delivered by state police cars to every parish.

All public employees were expected to subscribe.

Meanwhile, ten percent was subtracted from each state worker's monthly salary.

Long kept the proceeds in a chest he called "the deduct box."

From this reserve of hard cash, Huey financed the political campaign paid his travel expenses and "encouraged" legislative support.

Six days before the 1930 senatorial election when two men threatened to embarrass Long with revelations about a woman rumored to be his mistress he had them kidnapped and held until the danger passed.

ANNOUNCER: Despite the heat of the campaign the primary is a peaceful one-- the most peaceful in years old-timers say.

Even Mayor Walmsley himself is surprised at the lack of outbreaks.

He has a bigger surprise awaiting him because the Kingfish is still the Kingfish.

NARRATOR: On election day Long carried 53 of the 64 parishes in the state.

The people had spoken and the legislature which had once tried to impeach him now had to listen.

Long did not plan to take up his senatorial duties for 14 months: plenty of time to cement his hold on Louisiana and to transform whole parts of it.

When an important anti-Long legislator stubbornly refused to go along with his call for a new 34-story state capitol building-- the tallest in the United States-- Long drilled a hole in the ceiling of the old capitol and had the man's seat moved so that water from the leaky roof streamed onto his head.

The new building went up.

It was a monument to Huey Long.

A new campus for Louisiana State University was built-- Huey's special pride.

Nothing consumed more of his attention.

He diverted highway funds to pay for a massive building program hired and fired its football coaches and its presidents and he dealt swiftly with campus critics.

He once suspended 22 journalism students explaining, "This is my university and I ain't paying anybody to criticize me."

He sat on the bench during L.S.U.

games, thought up plays, gave locker-room pep talks between halves and even helped compose the school marching song.

In 1932, two years after he was elected to the Senate his hand-picked slate swept the statewide election.

The new governor-elect was Oscar "Okay" Allen, a boyhood friend and so agreeable, according to Long's younger brother Earl that when a leaf blew onto his desk one morning, Allen signed it.

Huey Long was now a United States senator chairman of the state Democratic Committee and, in effect, still governor of Louisiana.

He ran L.S.U., the highway commission, the levy board the board of education.

He controlled patronage and policy in hospitals, prisons and schools.

The state militia and national guard were his private armies and effective political opposition had almost ceased to exist.

It was the largest concentration of political power in one's man hand the country had ever seen.

Four days later, he left for Washington.

LONG: According to the tables which we have assembled it is our estimate that four percent of the American people own 85% of the wealth of America and that over 70% of the people of America don't own enough to pay the debts that they owe.

NARRATOR: By the time Long finally arrived to take his Senate seat the Great Depression that began in 1929 had transformed the whole nation into something like back-country Louisiana.

One of every four Americans-- 34 million men, women and children-- belonged to a family without a full-time wage earner.

A million men roamed the countryside in search of jobs that did not exist-- maybe two million, maybe more, no one knew for sure.

In Harlan County, Kentucky, where the coal industry had died whole communities tried to survive on dandelions and blackberries and pokeweed.

In Chicago, 50 men fought with their fists over a single barrel of garbage.

Farm prices collapsed and farm families were driven off the land.

In just one day, one-quarter of the entire state of Mississippi went under the auctioneer's hammer.

Banks failed, and in several bankrupt cities the animals in the zoo were shot and the meat distributed to the poor.

Senator Huey Long now saw his chance to become the spokesman of all the nation's angry and dispossessed.

Other freshmen senators with big reputations back home had been dwarfed when they got to the Senate itself-- not Huey Long.

Senate convention holds that newcomers are supposed to not only be silent but invisible.

But on Huey's first day, he bounded onto the floor slapped one distinguished senator on the back, thumped the elderly Republican leader on the chest and strode around the chamber telling everyone the Kingfish had arrived.

All the while, he chewed on a big black cigar in violation of Senate rules putting it down on the clerk's desk just long enough to be sworn in.

He refused to serve on any committees-- they took time away from his speechmaking which could go on for days at a time-- Long fortifying himself with glasses of milk and fistfuls of chocolates.

Well, his style was, of course, flamboyant.

But he was a powerful speaker, and even when he... particularly when he was not telling the truth he was very persuasive.

NARRATOR: One day he told a group of senators a mob would attack the capitol bent on hanging them from the rafters.

"I have to determine," he said "whether I will stay and be hung with you or go out and lead the mob."

Nobody laughed.

Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky told him "You are the smartest lunatic I ever saw in my whole life."

Long took it as a compliment.

He was sort of a comedian, in a way except a comedian with sinister... sinister purposes.

NARRATOR: Once, every one of his fellow Democrats left the Senate floor in silent protest while he savaged one of their most respected colleagues.

But they could not afford to ignore him for more and more of their constituents were listening to what he had to say.

There has been yielded too much to eat, too much to wear everything to live in.

The Lord has answered the prayer.

He has called the barbecue.

"Come to my feast," he said to 125 million American people.

But Morgan and Rockefeller and Mellon and Baruch have walked up and took 85% of the vittles off the table.

( laughter and applause ) Now, how are you going to feed the balance of the people?

what's Morgan and Baruch and Rockefeller and Mellon going to do with all that grub?

They can't eat it.

They can't wear the clothes.

They can't live in the house.

Give them a yacht!

Give them a palace!

Send them to Reno and give them a new wife when they want, if that's what they want.

( laughter ) But when they've got everything on the God-slaving earth that they can eat and they can wear and they can live in and all that their children can live in and wear and eat and all their children's children can use then we've got to call Mr. Morgan and Mr. Mellon and Mr. Rockefeller back and say, "Come back here.

"Put that stuff back on this table here "that you took away from here that you don't need.

Leave something else for the American people to consume."

And that's the program.

My daddy always said "The rich don't want the poor to get ahead of them."

And that's-- if he'd have become president he'd have said-- like he said it-- of course he couldn't make every man a king but that was his words.

And my daddy said that would never work because they wouldn't stand for it in Washington.

NARRATOR: 32 typists labored in round-the-clock shifts just to answer the mail that now flowed into Long's Senate office-- so much mail that he finally was given an extra office just to handle it.

Long was becoming a major political force in the country and as the 1932 presidential election approached would-be Democratic candidates competed for his backing.

Long finally threw his support to governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York claiming that F.D.R.

had promised to redistribute America's wealth along the lines Long had suggested.

Roosevelt had made no such pledge but Long campaigned hard for Roosevelt in three western states as much to demonstrate his own vote-getting power outside his region as to help his party's presidential nominee.

LONG: Before we declared ourselves for anybody for president of the United States we saw to it that that man declared himself in favor of the redistribution of wealth in the United States.

NARRATOR: Long won a victory of his own that year far sweeter to him than Franklin Roosevelt's.

He had stormed into Arkansas to campaign for the incumbent senator, Hattie Caraway a soft-spoken woman who had been appointed to fill her late-husband's Senate term and was now trying to win election in her own right.

She was the decided underdog before Long crossed the Arkansas border in his bright blue Cadillac, accompanied by two sound trucks and two tons of fiery campaign literature.

He made five to six stops a day, covering 2,100 miles in a week making 39 speeches to more than 200,000 voters who flocked to see and hear the Louisiana legend.

He sold Hattie by selling himself, and he did it in the classic Huey manner.

When he left the state just seven days later hoarse but exultant Mrs. Caraway was the unbeatable front runner and became the first woman ever elected to the Senate.

I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will, to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.

LONG: We've tried the Republican Party we've tried the Democratic Party and then we've gone back and tried the Republican Party and now we're back trying the Democratic Party.

And unfortunately, whenever we get into power with either one of these parties we find that the one crying need of our people-- the redistribution of wealth so that none would be too poor and none would be too rich-- is always neglected by the party that is in power.

NARRATOR: By early 1933, it was clear that Washington was not big enough for both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Huey P. Long.

F.D.R.

had originally hoped to tame Huey, he told an aide to make him useful to the New Deal.

But Huey would not be tamed.

Well, we've had the promises from the president many, many times and now we're wanting a fulfillment.

No empty words, nor empty messages mean anything to us and no kind of law except one that gives employment and homes and comfort and education to our people will satisfy us in the least.

NARRATOR: Long declared that the Depression would never lift could never lift, unless wealth was redistributed.

He called his program "Share Our Wealth" and said at various times that his principles were drawn from the Bible the speeches of William Jennings Bryan and an article he had read in the Saturday Evening Post.

The specifics of his plan often shifted but specifics didn't matter to the desperate people to whom he spoke and they signed up for his "Share Our Wealth" clubs all across the country.

Really, my impressions of Huey Long were not everybody's impressions because I thought he did a great thing for the state.

He put us on the map, man.

I mean, nobody could say a word about Louisiana, I'll tell you that, you know, without Huey-- ( clenches fist ) which was... went right along with what I liked.

How's that, Mr.

Senator?

That's fine, but aren't you going to sing it since we've changed that last line to mean "Every girl a queen".

All right, I'd be glad to.

Thank you.

( band begins playing ) ♪ Every man a king, every girl a queen ♪ ♪ For you can be a millionaire ♪ ♪ But there's something belonging to others ♪ ♪ There's enough for all people to share ♪ ♪ When it's sunny June and December, too ♪ ♪ Or in the wintertime or spring ♪ ♪ There'll be peace without end ♪ ♪ Every neighbor a friend ♪ ♪ With every man a king.

♪ Thank you.

Thank you.

Think you got a good band.

MAN: How in the name of God do you fathers and mothers in this audience expect your little boys and girls... NARRATOR: There were other men selling other schemes.

Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit radio priest preached in favor of inflated currency and against Wall Street and international bankers.

Are you going to leave this country worse than you found it?

Or are you going to fight for your children?

NARRATOR: Dr. Francis Townsend, an elderly California physician wanted to grant a monthly pension to every worker over 60 who was willing to retire and to spend the money within 30 days.

Long, Coughlin and Townsend were ambitious and F.D.R.

had to take them all seriously.

But only Huey Long combined a radical program with a solid record as a vote-getter.

Each time he made a national radio broadcast the network received some 60,000 letters of support and Long's Washington office was flooded with even more.

I think Huey Long has some very good ideas and I'd like to see him get a chance to work them out.

Huey Long's appeal is only to ignorant people in distress.

In my opinion, he is the south end of a northbound horse.

We expect to see the 48 states of America and the United States fall in line with Louisiana "Share Our Wealth" program.

That would mean that there'll be no such thing as a man without a home and something to eat and something to wear and a job.

If you allow a big man to have billions then all of us can't have anything else.

So we propose that none shall be bigger than a ten millionaire and none shall own less than a home and the comforts necessary for a home and property to educate their children.

All of these programs in a sense that were F.D.R.

they were also Huey Long although he put them in different language.

"Share the wealth," you know that's got a... oh, that sounds good to the man on the farm behind the plow and the man walking down Main Street or sitting on a fence-- That's good to him and he had the ability to have people understand that's what he meant.

I think Senator Huey P. Long is the smartest man of the day a great organizer and absolutely sincere in everything he does and says.

Huey P. Long, Jr. represents the extreme development of all the evil and corruption that has cursed the government of Louisiana within our memory.

He typifies personally all that we would not want our children to be.

I think Huey Long has a lot of good principles.

He encourages people to think.

But as to his leadership, I question his ability.

I thank you.

SCHLESINGER: There was great concern in Washington over Huey Long and his ambitions.

Jim Farley, for example, who was then postmaster general and chairman of the Democratic National Committee was greatly concerned over the possibility of a third party led by Huey Long in 1936.

Farley brought Huey Long in for a meeting hoping to mend things.

As they sat in the Oval Office, and Farley suddenly noticed that Huey Long hadn't taken his hat off.

He kept his hat on during the meeting with the president.

Occasionally he'd take off his hat to make a point and then put it back on his head.

And Farley didn't know what to make of this-- it seemed some kind of calculated expression of contempt.

F.D.R.

paid no attention to it and talked affably on and Long went away.

It was after that meeting that Long expressed a great sense of frustration and bafflement over his failure to disturb or upset F.D.R.

But by that time it was clear that neither had much use for the other.

It is true that the toes of some people are being stepped on and are going to be stepped on.

But these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or to gain position or riches or both by some shortcut that is harmful to the greater good.

Senator, is your hat in the ring for 1936?

If the events continue as they now are and circumstances are what they appear to be it's almost certain that I will be a candidate.

ANNOUNCER: We will see a national "Share Our Wealth" convention in 1936.

The masses are ripe for it.

Huey may not win the first time, but remember: he won the Louisiana governorship in his second attempt.

NARRATOR: He dictated his own campaign biography inevitably titled "Every Man a King" and began to publish a new version of his old newspaper now called the American Progress and aimed at a national audience.

The president did his best to keep the Kingfish from becoming a further threat.

Federal patronage now went to Long's enemies in Louisiana.

A Treasury Department probe of Long's tax returns and those of his closes associates begun under Herbert Hoover, was now pressed forward.

They never proved anything on him.

Oh, they tried.

They had men follow him everywhere he went.

I walked with him into a store to buy some shirts one time.

The moment he walked out he told me, "Look at that so-and-so over there.

"See, he's up there trying to find out "how much I paid for that shirt so they can show that I spent some money that I didn't have."

And laughed about it.

Paid cash for it, of course.

I would have an election held in this country between "high popalowrum" and "low popahighrum"-- Roosevelt on the one hand and Hoover on the other the twin bedmates of disaster.

We want neither one of them and if we've got to have a candidate away from the Republican Party and away from the Democratic Party I, for one, am perfectly willing to see that there is another choice in the United States in 1936 or a chance to have a choice.

WARREN: There used to be a tale circulating in Louisiana about the Kingfish sitting around with his cronies and suddenly, he wasn't talking.

He was looking from face to face with great curiosity.

And his cronies, not accustomed to his total silence said, "What's the matter, Boss, what you thinking about?"

"Well," he said, "I'm just thinking "how if I should die all you guys would be in jail right away."

NARRATOR: His eyes may have been on the White House but he never allowed his grip on the state to slacken-- even momentarily.

It steadily tightened during his years in Washington and with it came a new ruthlessness.

Big or small, he knew just where an opponent's political weakness was and had no scruples about exploiting it if necessary.

MORGAN: There was extreme poverty amongst all classes of people.

Jobs were at a premium, and he had the patronage.

There was nothing but political patronage that held a lot of people together and that was... that was life.

It was terribly important to individuals and if it wasn't important to one individual it was important to that individual's brother sister, cousin or best friend.

So the control that he had grew out of the necessities of people or their willingness to grab at anything like these crackpot economic schemes such as the "Share The Wealth."

There was nowhere that you could get money at all except maybe from the power company, had some salaries and the state.

If you wanted to have cash, you had to work for the state.

And you didn't work for the state if you didn't subscribe to what Huey wanted you to be for.

In politics, there's always two sides just like there's night and day.

You can't have politics unless you have two sides to it.

And he was always on the winning side.

And it was good if you agreed with him and if you didn't, oh boy.

I think we just met in the lobby or somewhere in the capitol and he said, "Cecil, I want to see you.

I want you to vote for House Bill number so-and-so."

And I said, "Well, Huey, I just can't do it."

"Why?"

I said, "Well, it's just one of those things "that is completely contrary "to the principles of local self-government "and it just increases the power of the governor in Baton Rouge and it's just something that I just can't support."

That same evening I went home and my mother said, "Your father has been fired."

Oh, that's not quite right because political spoils was the, uh... wave of the day.

It had been for... ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.

He was... he used the spoils system to no greater advantage than his enemies had used it.

In other words, if you had not voted for them at the time they were in power, they didn't give you a job.

If you voted against them, they fired you.

The thing is that some of the things you could be for but you couldn't be for the method by which he was getting those things.

With him, "L'état, c'est moi."

And he felt that whatever he wanted, he did.

And the upshot of it was that in those last months-- I was looking through the old Daily Courier and you could see what was going on there.

The people were getting more and more frustrated and when the janitor from the school had to go to get okayed in Baton Rouge-- well, Hodding's editorials were pretty strong telling free people that they should live as free people.

NARRATOR: The political atmosphere in Louisiana thickened supercharged by the bitterness of the fierce anti-Long factions.

"There was a wildness in the air," one man said.

Legislation of dubious constitutional validity was rammed through the state legislature wholesale by a United States senator with no legal power to do so.

Huey had elections delayed or speeded up or had Governor Allen do it which amounted to the same thing.

He treated his most slavish supporters with brutal contempt.

He had bought one legislator so cheap he said, "We thought we stole him."

When another extended his hand in greeting Long turned away saying, "I paid for you.

I don't have to shake your hand."

We're not going to have New Orleans nor Louisiana run by the thieves, the vandals and the criminals who were granted the right to make pardons grant paroles or anything else but to practice their thuggery against the common citizenship in any way that they desire.

NARRATOR: Long and Mayor Walmsley of New Orleans feuded constantly over control of that city.

And the old regulars and state police forces only narrowly averted armed confrontation time and again.

By 1933, New Orleans and Baton Rouge were frequently in a state of siege.

In 1935, Long's enemies formed "the minutemen" and talked of storming the capitol with submachine guns.

The chairman of a Senate investigating committee advised anyone who thought he knew about politics to go down to Louisiana and take a postgraduate course.

He wanted to have all the power.

He misread the Bible.

The bible says, "Thine is the power and the glory."

Huey Long's view was "Mine is the power and the glory."

I think he came to the conclusion-- uniquely among our politicians-- that you cannot do the good that he wanted to do and deliver the services that he wanted to deliver and free people from the exploitation as he wanted to you cannot do that in a democracy-- that the pressures worked too strongly against it; the pressures of interests the pressures of large economic interests, and so forth.

And so that Long, in my judgment ultimately despaired of democracy and turned to the rather dictatorial methods that he used in the later years of his life.

It's all a matter of degree-- it's all a matter of degree.

There are all sort of things that you would not be justified in doing under ordinary circumstances that you'd be justified in doing under extraordinary circumstances.

From Huey's point of view to separate the rich from some of that wealth in order that those who were less fortunate could have a little something was worth paying a big price for.

You look around and you could see what was happening.

You could see, on one hand the sudden social goods being done, being delivered.

But this is true of all authoritarian states.

Mussolini or Hitler or anybody else give some people what they get.

They all do that.

You cannot have a tyranny without a paying-off for it-- anywhere.

He became as close to a dictator as we've ever had in the United States.

He stole and he used force against his opponents.

He destroyed, in effect, local government in Louisiana.

His motto was "Every Man a King" but only one man wore a crown, and that was Huey Long.

It seemed to me that to a large extent his critics were confusing the forms of democracy with the fact of democracy.

The people's votes didn't do them much good until Huey Long came along.

Maybe his enemies didn't like his methods but the people were getting what they were voting for when he was a governor and a United States senator.

NARRATOR: Once, an embattled anti-Long legislator handed the Kingfish a copy of the Louisiana constitution suggesting that he study it.

Long gave it right back saying, "I'm the constitution around here now."

Hodding Carter, an anti-Long newspaper editor whom the Kingfish tried to drive from his state saw Huey's armed troops and wrote "If ever there was a need for shotgun government "that time is now.

"Let us read our histories again.

"They will tell us "with what weapons we earned the rights of free men.

Then, by God, let's use them."

A lot of bad feelings between those who were for him and those who were against him.

I mean, there was very great bitterness there.

The state was factionalized beyond anything you'd ever seen, or ever seen since.

I'd say it was factionalized.

I don't like to characterize the total man as evil but he was certainly considered that by everyone opposed to him really.

He was considered "the wild man," primarily.

And that developed into a consideration of him as a distinctly evil force in the state of Louisiana and a force to be feared-- and by very, very many people, a force to be destroyed.

Evil is a difficult thing to define.

We all have the worm in our apple.

But I do feel that he got confused.

Not... he... finally he got to the point that he really thought that he was it and that anything he wanted was right because he wanted it.

And I think at that point he was confusing the good of the people with the good of Huey P. Long.

I represent the good citizens of Louisiana.

We are tired of a rule in our state of a dictator.

We feel that it is time for this dictatorial business to end.

We feel that Huey P. Long has controlled our state long enough and he does not have the interest of our people at heart.

He is a selfish dictator.

And we will fight and fight.

We want him dead politically, but not dead physically.

MORGAN: Every time there was a gathering-- I don't care who the people were that I associated with-- every time there was a gathering of two or three people somebody would say, "That son of a bitch ought to be shot."

Somebody would say it in every gathering.

And the tension was so extremely high that, um... and the feeling was so strong that there was hardly any other conversation throughout the state.

I have the pleasure to undertake to describe to you... ( flashbulb explodes ) ( first quiet, then loud laughter ) ( someone in crowd says something ) Now, you see there?

( more laughter ) You see, that bomb didn't explode till tonight.

NARRATOR: Long had always feared assassination.

"I'm a cinch to be shot," he told friends.

He carried a pistol and armed guards accompanied him everywhere shoving back even old friends who tried to get too close.

He kept the shades drawn in the governor's mansion so that no one could get a clear shot at him from the street and he sat near the door in the Senate so he could get out fast if someone threw a bomb into the chamber.

In August of 1935, he charged on the Senate floor that his enemies back home had held a meeting to discuss murdering him.

He even suggested that F.D.R.

had agreed to pardon the killer in advance.

He knew he was going to be killed.

He had no time to waste, and there was so much to do and he had to do it in that time.

And the people who followed him knew their lives were in danger.

They knew so much was in danger, but it meant so much because the poor people had nothing... nothing at all.

Life was so hard for them, and he changed all of that.

He promised there would be changes and there were changes immediately.

He was like a steamroller.

Everything was right now.

Because the man knew he was going to be killed soon.

NARRATOR: In the summer of 1935, Long was even more impatient than usual.

He signed a contract for a new book to be called My First Days in the White House.

It had already been written.

And he assured his friends that there was plenty of money for the coming presidential campaign in the deduct box-- more than a million dollars.

But before he could run full-time for the White House he had unfinished business back in Baton Rouge.

In early September he ordered the legislature into special session.

There were 42 bills he wanted passed right away most of them aimed at enhancing his power still further.

Among them was a law that would eliminate an old opponent Judge Benjamin Pavy of St. Landry Parish by redrawing his district.

Long journeyed to the capitol in person and roamed the house floor as usual to make sure everything went smoothly.

It did.

All 42 bills were introduced into the house on Sunday, September 8.

All seemed sure to pass in the state senate the following day.

In the hall outside the house chamber a slender dark-haired man wearing glasses and a white linen suit was waiting.

He was Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr. a 29-year-old surgeon, a family man and the son-in-law of the judge who was about to be gerrymandered out of his job.

According to witnesses, he carried a .38 caliber pistol.

Long emerged into the corridor loping, as always, far ahead of his aides and bodyguards.

"That man never walked," Justice John Fournet remembered.

FOURNET: As he emerged there all of a sudden I saw a strange look in his face.

And at the same time-- I had a brand-new Panama hat in my left hand-- I saw a little gun go right close to me within a foot or two.

Black gun, automatic.

And at... simultaneously one of the so-called bodyguards-- a young fellow by the name of Murphy Roden if I remember his name right-- grabbed the gun, and it went off simultaneously.

Of course, it hit Huey on the right side somewheres along here and went through the small of the back.

You see, it's downward.

Well, Huey, of course, made a whoop.

And at first he was apparently trying to get back into the secretary's office when he saw that gun, I guess.

But after he was shot he reversed himself and ran across at full speed.

MAN: As I opened the door of the governor's office the sound of a shot came from the corridor outside.

Senator Long staggered away his right hand clasping his side.

Suddenly, a dozen or more men began firing and the hallway was filled with the sound of exploding firearms.

But when they shot him, he didn't fall.

No, he walked down... out of the building.

NARRATOR: Long's guards fired some 30 bullets into Weiss's body.

No one would ever be certain of his motive or even certain of his guilt.

He hadn't died when I heard it.

I was listening to the radio and heard it on Walter Winchell and I ran down the steps to the office as fast as I could go to see where Hodding was because it said it was a man in white.

And thank God, Hodding was there.

And my mother telephoned from New Orleans and said "Betty, where is Hodding?"

I said, "Hodding's here.

Hang up, I've got to find Mr. Carter"-- his father.

And everybody in the state felt that way that... everyone... all the antis-- you didn't know who it was, it could have been anybody.

And I hate to say, we really hoped that he would die.

Now, that's a terrible thing to say.

NARRATOR: Long was taken to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital.

A single bullet had perforated his colon and nicked his kidney.

Surgery failed to stop the internal bleeding.

JOHNSON: I went on duty with a patient two rooms from him and that's when I saw him.

They had a nurse, Miss Mead and he was just kept saying, you know, "Water, water, water."

He was thirsty.

And she said, "Senator, you can't have any water."

And then she turns to me and she says sort of under her breath, you know, she said "From what people say about him, I should give him some because where he's going, it's going to be pretty hot."

NARRATOR: His family and closest political allies stood around the bedside.

One remembered asking him where the deduct box was.

Long murmured that he would tell him later.

Then after a while, somebody rapped on the door after they had the coroner's inquest and after the man was found riddled with 59 bullets in his body.

And they came... he knocked on the door.

I said, "You can't come in."

He said, "Well, I just wanted to tell Huey who shot him."

Huey, as loud as ever-- "Let him in!"

He had a big, strong voice.

And of course I had to let him in.

And he told him that the young doctor by the name of Carl Weiss had shot him.

He said, "What does he want to shoot me for?"

Well, I'm sure I was stunned... as most people are.

You never think it's going to happen.

You always hope that it won't.

And he wanted so to live.

And his last words were, "Don't let me die.

I've got so much to do."

NARRATOR: But he did die at 4:06 a.m., September 10, 1935.

He was just 42 years old.

RUSSELL LONG: I was at New Orleans the time I got the news.

And at that time I was 16 years old-- almost 17.

We got the family in the automobile and drove up.

Got there after dark.

I was hoping he would survive it.

And it was a tremendous blow to me.

I just didn't believe it could happen that my father would be assassinated even though I knew there were plots going on around the state to assassinate the man.

It's just something I had to live with.

I was very impressed with him.

But it's a terrible thing to say I was really glad when they shot him.

I don't believe in terrorism or assassination but he could have become an American dictator.

When I heard he had died, I was in the Strummer Hotel on the fourth floor where I roomed at that particular time.

It just killed my appetite for about two days.

I just couldn't eat knowing I'd lost my best friend when they killed Huey P. Long.

Well, of course I was very shocked and very sad.

I'd lost one of my best friends; one of the best friends I ever had.

He took me out of the cotton fields where I would have probably continued if it hadn't been for him.

He gave me an opportunity to go to school of which I took advantage and I couldn't have gone otherwise.

I think the tragedy was expressed by my mother that she just felt that a horrible event occurred and there's great sorrow in both the Long and the Weiss family for what went on.

The only thing we could do was pray for both of their souls.

I was in Plaquemine at the time.

So I went...

I went and seen him laid out in the casket.

That was an ordeal thing.

People had to get into line and get there and walk behind and just look, and that was it.

I don't know how many people went there but there's no... no limits.

MAN: ♪ Huey Long, I hope you hear me ♪ ♪ The words I have to say ♪ ♪ Your friends, they all do miss you... ♪ NARRATOR: There were big crowds at Weiss's funeral, too.

Some came to show support for what he'd done; others simply curious about the kind of man who would do such a thing.

The Long machine would never be the same again.

Several of Long's cronies did go to jail convicted of embezzlement, mail fraud and tax evasion.

The deduct box was never found.

Without their leader the national "Share Our Wealth" clubs withered away.

And in the presidential election of 1936 Franklin Delano Roosevelt took 46 of the 48 states including Huey Long's Louisiana.

WARREN: Well, I was in Nevada on a Sunday morning getting gas from a little desert filling station when the gas attendant said, "They shot your boy last night" seeing my Louisiana license.

And he began to call some people around and there weren't many people there to call around-- all the state of Nevada got about five-- and they wanted to talk about him because he was felt there, you see, as somehow their friend.

And they wanted me to talk about him.

And all the way across the continent I made a habit of stopping at smallish places not at big filling stations where people would gather immediately around the Louisiana license and talk about Long.

I'd say he was a great man, a man of the people.

Because he knew people.

He knew their needs.

He knew our needs.

He knew every section of his... and not only in our state, but beyond our state.

I think that it was necessary for the state for somebody with some of his qualities to come forward.

And I think he muffed it.

I think he had the... had the capacities for greatness.

And I think that he did some things that stimulated the state enormously and that's on the good side.

On the bad side he left us a heritage from which we have not yet recovered.

He was everything-- good, bad and everything depending on who you were, I guess because there were surely some people who... who didn't like him.

I think he was a loner, always.

He appealed, perhaps, to the crowds but in a sense, he was never with the crowds.

He wanted to stand apart and have them see him and hear him and he be their savior in a very sense of, let's say, even patriotism, perhaps: "Love Louisiana."

"A winning team."

He was the Kingfish, always.

I think we were living through a revolution.

I think what Long was doing was a revolution and we were fighting that revolution and fought with the tools that Mr. Jefferson said we could use and we we ready to fight,to stop this man.

There were two revolutions: his, the dictator's, producing great things and the people who didn't want the power taken away.

WARREN: "What happened to his greatness is not the question.

"Perhaps he spilled it on the ground "the way you spill a liquid when the bottle breaks.

"Perhaps he piled up his greatness "and burned it in one great blaze in the dark "like a bonfire "and then there wasn't anything but dark "and the embers winking.

"Perhaps he could not tell his greatness from ungreatness "and so mixed them together "so that what was adulterated was lost.

"But he had it.

I must believe that."

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org RANDY NEWMAN: ♪ What has happened down here is the wind has changed ♪ ♪ Clouds roll in from the north ♪ ♪ And it start to rain.

♪ ♪ Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time ♪ ♪ Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

♪ ♪ The river rose all day ♪ ♪ The river rose all night ♪ ♪ Some people got lost in the flood ♪ ♪ Some people got away all right.

♪ ♪ River had busted through ♪ ♪ Clear down to Plaquemine.

♪ ♪ Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

♪ ♪ Louisiana ♪ ♪ Louisiana ♪ ♪ They're trying to wash us away ♪ ♪ They're trying to wash us away ♪ ♪ Louisiana ♪ ♪ Louisiana ♪ ♪ They're trying to wash us away ♪ ♪ They're trying to wash us away ♪ ♪ They're trying to wash us away ♪ ♪ They're trying to wash us away.

♪